Who created the first widely used Internet emoticon, :-) ?

Scott Fahlman created the first widely used Internet emoticon, :-). On September 19, 1982, Fahlman suggested using :-) to mark jokes on Carnegie Mellon University’s online bulletin-board system.

The sideways face helped readers distinguish humorous comments from serious ones in text-only conversations, where tone and facial expression were absent. Fahlman also proposed :-( for messages that were not meant humorously.

This text symbol predates modern graphical emoji. Emoji developed later, especially in Japan, and use pictographic characters rather than combinations of keyboard punctuation. The original emoticon is often shortened to a colon and closing parenthesis, but the full form includes the hyphen representing a nose.